[BC] CCA and QEI

[Brew]

Dan Kelley <<mailto:djkelley at frontier.net>djkelley at frontier.net> wrote:

I recall CCA also using that same QEI exciter with the CCA logo on it.


Yes, when I worked testing transmitters at CCA in the early seventies 
our FMs went from the CCA Direct Exciter (a crystal with an oven) to 
QEI's frequency synthesized 2 rack unit high exciter.  I remember 
being amazed that you could change the frequency just by changing a 
jumper, or dip switch, or something.  And there was no oven, yet it 
was frequency stable!

QEI also made some frequency monitors for us, too.  I think we might 
have been one of their first customers, but it's a time long ago and far away.

QEI was only about ten or twenty miles away from CCA in Gloucester 
City and Charlie Holbrook often showed up to go to lunch with Joe 
Ponist, Bernie Gelman and Bill Hoffman.

Bernie Gelman and Bill Hoffman are both gone, but Joe Ponist works at 
Rutgers University these days.

I once saw a transmitter from an unknown (to me, anyway) company once 
when I was on a field trip to CHOO in Ajax, Ontario.  The station tag 
line was 14-CHOO, which made me wonder how they could be 10 kW on 
1400, one of our Class IV frequencies, even with their four tower 
inline directional shooting northward, away from the 
states.  Investigation revealed they were actually on 1390.  Charlie 
Tryon was the CE and Brian Sawyer did their antenna work, I remember.

For a backup transmitter to the CCA AM-10,000D they had a one rack 
width 1 kW transmitter from a company I'd never heard off - Contel 
(Continental Electronics Wholesale Corporation) in Hialeah, Florida.

I suspected right away that they were trying to capitalize on 
Continental Electronics' name.  The transmitter was hi-level plate 
modulated, but the AF section was rather underpowered and when I 
modulated it with a 1 kHz. tone it couldn't even make 100%.  I forget 
what tubes it had for modulators, but I'm pretty sure they couldn't 
put out the 2 kW needed to modulate 1 kW of RF, even when 
new.  Charlie Tryon said that he was glad to have it, rather than no 
backup at all, and that he believed Contel mostly did business in 
South America.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't type accepted for use in the United States, 
but Canada wasn't as strict back then, I guess.

I see Contel is listed on:

<http://www.transmitter.be/abbr.html>http://www.transmitter.be/abbr.html

as a Shortwave Transmitter company.

Dave, how did Continental feel about the Continental Electronics 
Wholesale Corporation name?

brew - Bruce Schiller at CBS-TV NY Master Control Maintenance and WA2ZST